Monday, July 25, 2011

I seem to be doing an awful lot of wearables here on Mixed Media Artist these days! Must be because the lazy hazy crazy dayz of summer are here, and I can't seem to peel myself off the swing on the front porch. Tisk tisk...so LAZY!!

Anyway, I bought this cute little (majorly cheap) dress at Walmart recently, but it was a bit dull for my tastes. The stripes looked like they had been bleached. I'm not sure if they were or not, but they gave me the idea to bleach them a bit more and paint them.

I used some gel bleach to make the strips just a little whiter, and then laundered the dress to make sure all traces were removed. You want to make sure that the garment you're painting is clean anyway, since you'll be heat-setting the paint, so this step does double-duty! Paint away and have fun. I used full-bodied acrylics thinned with water. I didn't even bother with fabric medium, because I wanted a thin watercolor look to the stripes, not something opaque and heavy. I used freezer paper in between the layers to prevent paint from bleeding through to the back, and I did paint both sides.

Once the dress was fairly dry, I popped it into the dryer and put it on high heat for about 30 minutes. This is why it was important for the dress to be clean! The dryer heat-set the paints, probably pretty much completely, but I still decided to iron the dress just to make sure. Use some parchment paper to protect your iron, and wear with pride!

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